Category: Politics

Documentation Crunch Time

Remember back in the ’80s when all of those cold war movies showed the bad guys, the commies, stopping their poor oppressed citizens on the street and asking to see their papers? Remember how evil that felt? The poor saps having to cough up their legal documentation to the secret police at a moment’s notice?

I wonder why I have been thinking of that lately.

So a couple of weeks ago my US passport expired. My state drivers license is going to expire soon as well, and when I renew it I have to get the new federal “Real ID” because we live in a police state now. Unfortunately you need to have an appointment to setup the Real ID and a month ago when I booked one the best date I could get was after my license expires.

The good news is, my passport renewal went off without a hitch and I got it done WAY faster than I expected so I can use my new passport in the Real ID process. That’s cool. I wonder if I can renew my state drivers license first and then replace it a short time later with the federal document. I am guessing I would have to pay twice if I did that and I’ll be damned if I am going to give that tariffing fucker a penny more than I have to. Not that I am cynical about the collapse of my former country or anything. You know how it is.

Papers, please. Fucking authoritarian dictatorship fascist fucking fuckers.

Another Painful Week Ahead

You know… some days… I really wish I could just stay in bed and wait for something to come along that magically picks me up and moves me and my family to somewhere in Europe.

I mean, what the fuck?

First, the orange shit clown announces he is going to reopen Alcatraz and use it for what he says is the worst criminals in the country but what we all know is to use it as a concentration camp for people who don’t like him. We all know that, right? Why ship immigrants to El Salvador when you can ship them to Alcatraz? Forgetting the fact that it failed as a maximum security prison once before and that it is just a museum now… Seriously… what the fuck?

I was hanging my head in embarrassed shame after reading about all of this and that’s when I heard the second idiocy of the day. The orange shit clown has announced a 100% tariff on… wait for it… you’re not going to believe this one… movies. That’s right, you read that correctly. He just doubled the price of a movie ticket. He took an industry that has been on death’s door since Covid and doubled the price of admission in order to… checking my notes… save it.

Again I ask, in all seriousness… what the actual fuck?

Here’s a photo of two cats with stunned, disbelieving looks on their little cat faces. Both of them have asked me why we’re not packing up to move to Europe where people are less certifiably insane than they are here in the country formerly known as the united states and currently known as fucking moron land. I don’t know, cats. I just don’t know anymore.

A 100% tariff on… movies… yeah, that’s going to make america great again for sure. Finger right on the pulse there, you fascist schmuck.

Practice Tomorrow

Band practice is on for 10:00am tomorrow. Morning practice is weird, but it will work. Hopefully the bass player’s family will all be awake before all the noise starts (eek!).

I told the other guys that I put it on my Google Calendar so there’s no backing out now. We’ll see. Lucy still has about 26 hours to pull the football away from Charlie Brown (me).

237/365

I’m rewatching the three new episodes of Andor right now. I’m up to the third episode with that scene with Bix. It is fucking disturbing and really hard to watch. Star Wars for adults is a pretty accurate description of this show.

What else… I don’t know. One work day to survive before the weekend arrives. It’s going to be a long day, I fear. I haven’t taken any pictures of cats yet. I’m sure the opportunity will arise eventually.

I also haven’t looked at the news yet today. I’m always afraid to do so. I’m always in a borderline state of panic to learn about what fresh nazi hell was unleashed overnight. I’m so tired of living in “interesting times.” Fuck this. I want my country back. Failing that, I want my state to just leave and start over. 249 years was a good run, I guess.

What else… I don’t know. Here’s hoping for a nice easy work day followed by a nice and calm weekend… that includes my cousin’s husbands wake… fuck. The universe is just piling on. Hopefully there are brighter, less depressing, less fascist days ahead. Now, where did I put those two cats?

Tired Afternoon

I stayed up too late last night and now I am tired. That’s how it works for all of us, but it seems to be a bigger issue for folks who are old like me. I am going to have a birthday in a couple of weeks and I’m going to be 54. Wait… really? How is that possible? I know in the grand scheme of things that 54 isn’t that bad, I mean it’s not 80 or anything, but damn… I was 27 a few days ago. Wasn’t I?

What was I writing about?

Oh yeah, I am tired. It seems somehow worse than that though as I didn’t have time to follow any news yesterday and today I got caught up on the collapse of civilization. So RFK wants to create a autism database or some shit? Hmmm… didn’t the nazis do that with mental illnesses? Yeah, something like that. No surprise that we’re resurrecting that particular evil, but there you go. That on top of prison time without due process and willfully collapsing the economy in order to scam a couple of bucks off the rubes. Yeah. Are we great again? Maybe I’ll open up a new Signal chat and ask about it.

Ugh. Here’s a cat:

If the cat didn’t temporarily straighten out your soul, maybe a song will help:

Protests

We tried. Twice. We drove up to Kingston, NH for a protest but when we got there there were only a couple of people holding signs in a park. We changed direction and headed to Billerica, MA where there was a big rally going on in the town common. We tried to stop but there wasn’t any place to park and well… at the risk of TMI… there were full bladder issues that needed attending.

We will do better next time, and I promise there will be a next time. Until then, here’s a cat.

231/365

How Do We Make it Happen?

How do we make this happen? Do the Governors need to start the conversation at the state level? Do the senators and representatives need to start the conversation at the federal level? What do we need to do?

New England, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Washington, Oregon, and California. The United Atlantic and Pacific States. Negotiate permission to travel across the continent through Canada and then secede. With each new day secession becomes more and more inevitable.

— Rob (@robj1971.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T23:19:57.259Z

Enough is Enough

It is time to stop fucking around and start a serious discussion about secession.

Not only will they not return someone who was incorrectly deported to a concentration camp in El Salvador, but now the so-called president is planning to start deporting US citizens to the same gulag.

In addition to deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members, Trump and several officials have floated sending U.S. citizens convicted of violent crimes to the infamous El Salvador prison or other foreign prisons — something legal experts have said would violate the Constitution.

MORE: Trump says he’d deport US citizens convicted of crimes ‘in a heartbeat’ if legal

“I’m all for it,” Trump said of the idea on Monday.

“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now we’re studying the laws right now … If we can do that, that’s good,” Trump said.

The orange shit clown can have his little tin pot banana republic while the actual Americans can leave and start over. Enough is enough.

Nothing to Say

I feel like I should be saying something tonight but I really have nothing to say.

Between the executive branch deporting innocent people to foreign prisons and ignoring supreme court orders to return them to the bullshit save act passing the house to the blatant insider trading that tanked the US economy in order to help a few billionaires steal money from random americans… yeah… things absolutely suck right now.

My wife and I had some discussion on things for the future today that felt like the opposite of what’s going on outside of the house. As awful as the world is, our talk was positive. No spoilers though. You’re going to have to wait to hear about this stuff, if you ever hear about this stuff. You’ll probably never hear about this stuff. Suffice to say, optimism abounds.

What else… the third season of Yellowjackets wrapped up today. As always, no spoilers. I will say that at the end of the episode the adult version of Shauna can be seen wearing a Throwing Muses t-shirt. Hell yes. Great show.

What else… what else… nothing. I think that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll write something else before bed tonight, but probably not.

I Hate When it Hits Home

I saw a headline this morning that pissed me off and scared the crap out of me, but I haven’t been able to verify it yet (and I almost don’t want to even try, in the spirit of burying my head in the sand). It said that trump mentioned including pharmaceuticals in his tariff bullshit.

That’s scary shit. Where is my step son’s insulin manufactured? Where is the company that manufactures it based? Is the already insultingly high price of insulin about to go up? Is it manufactured in china? Will the price go up 104%?

Like I said, I have not verified this report yet. I tried looking online for about four seconds and then stopped. Think of it as a no-news-is-good-news kinda thing, you know?

Further thoughts on being in the spirit of hiding ones head in the sand, I feel like I have less and less to say on the interwebs these days. I feel like the state of the world is just making me draw more and more inward. The collapse of american democracy is getting me in touch with my inner introvert. That’s my natural state, I think. Despite being a ridiculous online over-sharer over the last 25+ years or so, the real me is someone who clams up and doesn’t speak unless spoken to. I feel that I am losing the fight to not be that way all the time. Social media used to be my personal revolution (this is getting way too dramatic), but facebook and twitter and instagram and threads are all dead to me now. Flickr is a social media site at its core, but I don’t use it in that sense very much. I still use bluesky, but with each passing day I find I have less and less to say. I’ve been using Flashes as an instagram alternative, but that app is literally just bluesky with a filter to only show posts with images.

This isn’t a censorship thing. I’m not afraid to speak out. trump is a fucking fascist who needs to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable, evil life. See? I am not afraid to say what needs to be said. I just don’t feel much of an urge to speak up anymore. It’s not even that… it’s more like I will speak out when I have something to say… I just don’t often feel like I have anything to say. I don’t know. I will say it’s one of the reasons I am considering canning this blog and all of the social media things I still use. If my country doesn’t give a fuck about me anymore, why would I waste the effort acting like I give a fuck about it in return? I do, and I will do what needs to be done… I think I am just tired.

Jen and I have been watching a show that is set in Australia. Maybe I’m just jealous of people who live in countries that aren’t actively eating themselves. I don’t know.

Boy… this is a depressing post, eh? Sorry. There will be cat photos at some point today. I promise.

PS: I am turning comments off. I’m not interested in comments on this one. I’m not sorry.